CoreMagazine's Brendan Sinclair has written a review of Halo. As many others have, he compared it favorably to Half Life, lamented the lack of bots, and thought the audio was even better than the visuals. Overall he gave the game an 'A' grade:
The Xbox could have launched with only Halo and people would still call it a success. Not since Half-Life on the PC have I played a first-person shooter this good. The single player story mode goes beyond functional and is actually engaging and almost clever. Multi-player mode is even better. A few gripes keep Halo from being an A+ title, but that's why they make sequels.
Perhaps we should start a Halo 2 countdown...